


Christmas (Has a ring to it)

by iammyownqueen



Series: Not going anywhere [1]
Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: And I mean a LOT, Bart cries a lot in this, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Flash Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Not really a Christmas fic i promise, let him be happy, maybe a little
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-02 02:29:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21154097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iammyownqueen/pseuds/iammyownqueen
Summary: Bart was not looking forward to Christmas this year, although it was fast approaching. His first two Christmas' at the Garricks had been nothing short of a fantasy. His first Christmas was especially magical, his family had made sure of that when they found out that before he came to the past, he didn’t even know what Christmas was.Don't read if you haven't seen season 3 yet.





	Christmas (Has a ring to it)

Bart was not looking forward to Christmas this year, although it was fast approaching. His first two Christmas' at the Garrick’s had been nothing short of a fantasy. His first Christmas was especially magical, his family had made sure of that when they found out that before he came to the past, he didn’t even know what Christmas _was._

  
He wasn’t sure when he’d first heard the word in the camps, or what prompted him to ask his mother what it meant. He only knew that he regretted it as soon as the words had left his mouth. In an instant, her eyes filled with tears and she gripped him into a sudden, tight hug.

  
“Don’t worry about that baby,” she spoke into his ear, her voice shaking in her tears. “You don’t need to know about that my little trooper. Forget you ever heard that word”

  
And he tried to. He really did. But he could never forget the look of regret on his mother’s face. He never asked again, but it always irked him. What was this Christmas? A massacre from long ago? Did his mother know people who were killed? Was it a Reach weapon used long ago and she was protecting him from through ignorance? She had never tried to keep him ignorant of the world around him. She couldn’t afford to. The world was too dangerous to be ignorant and stupid.

  
When he first heard the word in the past, it shook him to his core, not that is showed. He had been smiling and rambling about some food or another, (This world was so obsessed with flavor and spice, taste and texture, even color and appearance. It had floored him how picky people were about food here. Then again, he was a long way from the world he knew) when Nightwing laughed.

  
“You look like a little kid on Christmas morning,” he joked.

  
At least, Bart thought it was a joke. His words and face did not match at all with his mother's reaction. He wanted so badly to just look up the word, but his mother’s face and words echoed in his head. It was the one thing he could still do for her. Forget the word, as she told him to.

  
But time pressed on, and regardless. He wasn’t sure when he had put the pieces together, but he remembered being angry. The Reach had taken everything from him, from his family. His mother had always protected him in ignorance, not from the world around him, but of the world that had already died. She didn’t want him to know how good things were before, because she knew if he did, he would yearn for that better world. I world that she could never provide for him.

  
He’d kept many things secret from his old life. He didn’t really let his family, or anyone really, know how bad it was. He didn’t want to talk about it, and it wasn’t like his family would understand the world he came from anyway. It was earth, yes, but it may as well have been a different planet. He wasn't even sure when they figured out that he wasn’t a tourist. Perhaps they had never fully believed it at all. He wasn’t sure. In any case, when the conversation turned toward Christmas (“Christmas music already?” Iris had exclaimed. “It’s not even Thanksgiving yet!”) his family managed to wrestle the truth from him with increasingly pointed questions about the holiday in his time.

  
Even though it was their first Christmas without Wally, they all did their best to make sure that his first Christmas was the best of his life. Joan showed him how to make every Christmas cookie she knew how. Jay showed him how to cut and trim the Christmas tree, and how to string the lights so the whole tree glowed with a strange, alien light. They had made sure he experienced it all. Every crappy movie, every weird and bizarre tradition, everything that they thought he ought to know and do. And it was the best time of his life.

  
His second Christmas was just as memorable as the first. Though it was not his first Christmas, it was the twins. He got to see it all again for the first time through their young eyes. He understood more, and his gifts reflected his progress, both in understanding the Holiday and traditions of this new earth, and in understanding his family, and what they would like.

His second Christmas was anticipated for a whole year before the fact. Time moved far too slow, and he had his gifts prepared months in advance. He knitted a blanket for Joan. it took him months, even with his speed. (Once, when he was starting out, he knit so fast that both Joan's needles, and the scarf he was making, caught on fire. Speed was a no go, as far as knitting went.) For Jay, he got a set of drinking glasses that were shaped like beakers. (Once a scientist, always a scientist.) For his grandpa, he got a hat that said “World’s Best Grandpa. (He accepted it with a laugh as he put it on with a flourish.) Grandma was a bit harder to shop for, but Bart finally settled on a simple lotion bar, scented like roses. (They were her favorite.) He even got his Dad and Aunt Dawn gifts as well, a pair of flash and kid flash onesies that looked absolutely adorable on them.

  
His third Christmas in the past hit him like a truck. It all happened too soon. Joan was sick, and everything was focused around that. He hardly paid any mind to the date, with doctors’ appointments, hospital visits, and everything else going on in his life. When he wasn’t at school, he was at home or wherever Joan and Jay happened to be. When he wasn’t with them, he was training with his grandfather, or with the team, or on a mission, or fulfilling the Garrick’s required 5 hours a week of “friend time.” (They were afraid that Bart would spend all of his free time not doing school work or training, at their side, distancing himself from his friends. Their concerns weren’t entirely unjustified, if he was being honest.) There were times when the date slapped him in the face. Thanksgiving was one example. He had decided to spend Thanksgiving with his friends, and the teens from the metahuman youth center in Taos. His family had decided that it would be easier on everyone not to make a huge meal that year, with Joan’s failing health, and the twins being in their terrible years, it was hard to drop everything and cook for 5 speedsters. They decided to spend thanksgiving in their own houses and not make a big deal.

  
Sometime after Thanksgiving, a Christmas tree appeared in his living room in the same spot it had been both years prior. Jay and Joan both sat on the couch, speaking in hushed tones. (They did that a lot lately, and it was scaring him. It felt like they were trying to protect him from how bad it was, but he knew they couldn’t. Not really.) Upon seeing him, they brightened up and stopped whispering.  
“Hey champ!” Jay beamed. (He’d been calling him ‘champ’ more than ever recently.) “Ready to decorate the tree?”  
“Yeah, sure!” He said with a fake smile. They kept acting like everything was fine. It was not fine.  
He did like decorating the tree though. It somehow felt right, and for a while, everything was okay. He was okay.

He was not okay. A few days later, Joan ended up back at the hospital, worse than ever. And then the Reach came back and the world was ending and nothing was okay. But the Reach ships were just reactivated husks of what they used to be. The world was not ending. But he still was not okay. She was still not okay.  
She wasn’t awake a lot of the time now. Jay rescinded their 5 hours rule. He didn’t go out much. He even made the decision to stop being a part of the team until it was over. Jay let him. He skipped school. Jay let him.

  
Ten days after the fake Reach invasion, it was over. The house was too quiet. Too cold. The tree mocked him. He didn’t eat enough. Neither did Jay. It didn’t help that people were sending casserole after casserole. Nothing tasted like anything. (He hated how taste started to matter. It mattered to Joan.)

  
The funeral happened. He didn’t remember much. He hugged people when they approached him. He shook their hands. He said thank you for coming. He met old friends of hers, and tolerated when they told stories that he could care less about. Jaime helped him get through it. So did Ed. He went to Taos after the funeral because he needed to get out. He needed to see the sun and be around people who didn’t speak down to him or look at him with pitying eyes or remind him that she was never coming home.  
And suddenly it was Christmas Eve and he was not ready. Joan had done all of her Christmas shopping early because of course she did. All of the gifts she got were wrapped in the same purple paper. Different wrapped shaped boxes were set under the tree, more than any year before. She knew it was the end and she was going to go the same way she lived, loving and providing for her family with her whole heart.

  
They decided to have Christmas morning at the Allen house. They would have a large breakfast and open presents and probably cry a lot. But they were going to do it as a family. Without Joan.  
They didn’t really know what to do with themselves on Christmas Eve. It was just Jay and Bart. They spend some of the day with the rest of the family, and of course people stopped in. But it was different. They watched Christmas specials and ate the tasteless casseroles left by people after the funeral. There were no Christmas cookies. Neither Bart nor Jay had the heart to use her kitchen in such a way without her. Eventually, they went to bed, despite wanting to stay on the couch together all night. Jay was old and had a bad back. Bart wanted the day to be over already. So they slept.

  
Bart woke up on Christmas morning to Jay stroking his hair gently. He shifted a little in his bed before sitting up.

“Hey Buddy,” Jay said. He didn’t look like he had much sleep during the night. “Merry Christmas.”

  
Bart smiled at him groggily before hugging him close and mumbling a soft “Merry Christmas” into his chest.

  
They stayed like that for a while, and Bart knew he wasn’t the only one fighting tears at that moment. When they finally broke apart, they both took a moment to collect themselves before anything else.

  
“There’s something we-” he gave a heavy sigh. “I wanted to give you, before we went to Barry’s for the day.”

  
He took a small box wrapped in purple paper out of his pajama pocket and handed it to Bart. They had agreed that they would unwrap all of their presents together as a family. They knew how hard to would be to do any of it alone. Despite this Jay still wanted to give him this, before anything else. Joan had wrapped it, he was sure. It was wrapped with her paper, in her careful hand.

  
Bart softly tore the wrapping away and found that it was a ring box. Dread filled his stomach as he flipped open the lid. It was Joan’s wedding ring.

  
Bart couldn’t speak. The mattress shifted as Jay sat next to him and put his arm around his shoulders.

  
“We wanted you to have this, Bart. And when your ready, when you’ve found a nice girl, one you want to be with for the rest of your life, we want you to use this, if you wanted.” He squeezed his shoulders tight. “We never thought we would have this. Have you. We never thought we would be able to give this to someone else. You will always be our son Bart. No matter what happens.”  
Bart was already crying. He threw his arms around Jay and buried his head into the crook of his neck, still clutching the ring box tightly. He cried in his arms until Jay broke away and said softly, “We should get going soon.”

  
Bart shook his head. “No Jay. I-I can’t.” He tried blinking away the tears. He couldn’t accept this. Not when He’d seen this ring before. It was far from the broken, tarnished thing that his mother had hidden away and cherished. But it was the same.

  
He shook his head as he tried to get the words out. When they finally did, it was as a whisper.

  
“I knew this ring before I even knew Joan,” he tried to explain. “I- It was my moms too.”

  
He looked at Jay, but he wasn’t angry, or sad. He was shocked, but his eyes still portrayed kindness.

  
“Coming here, from the world that I’m from,” there was a lump in his throat, blocking his words. “Seeing Joan wearing that ring was like a sign that I was where I was supposed to be. Like I was finally in a place where I could be safe. That I could finally have a home like I never had before. She loved this ring so much,” he cried. “I can’t take it away from her like that. I-I can’t”

Bart closed the ring back and let it fall into his lap. “Besides,” he said, wiping his tears. “I’m not even sure I like girls like that. I-I don’t know. I’m not even sure.”

  
He couldn’t look at Jay. He hadn’t even fully admitted that truth to himself yet. He had no clue what Jay would even say or think. To refuse such a meaningful gift like that.

  
He opened the ring box in his lap just to look at it once more. Jay put his hand on his back and Bart turned to face him.

  
“Why don’t you keep it anyway?” He said softly. Bart was confused. He didn’t expect that reaction at all.

  
“Why don’t you keep it safe for me, until Don is ready to use it. And I’ll keep this,” he pointed to the ring on his own hand “until you are ready to use it. Deal?”

  
Bart’s eyes filled with tears again and he hugged Jay even tighter than before. Relief poured over him in waves. He loved his father. Both the almost-two-year-old, and the father who had taken him into his home and raised him these past two years, even when it was hard. Even when he had woken him up late at night with nightmares, or been confused about simple things, or needed help catching up in school because the Reach didn’t trust their slaves to learn how to read beyond simple instructions for menial labor. He loved his dad. He would always love and miss his moms too, but he would keep them both right in his heart, along with the ring that they shared, hanging just underneath his shirt cy the chain that hung around his neck. But for once, this chain didn’t hurt him or hold him captive.

This chain set him free.

**Author's Note:**

> It makes me angry and sad how little they addressed Joan's passing, which is a crime. Especially because they made the date of her funeral so close to Christmas. This is my first fic in a while and I'm actually really proud of how it turned out considering. Wrapping everything up was not my favorite, but I think I did okay. Hope you enjoyed!


End file.
